


quantum

by so_soft_boy, ymirjotunn



Category: Persona 5
Genre: All hurt no comfort, Asphyxiation, Dissociation, Eye Trauma, For The Love of God Stay Safe, Graphic Description of Injuries, M/M, NG+ Themes, Strangling, akira dies but he gets better, broken ribs, coughing up blood, hand trauma, interrogation room, putting the "wwwWWWHhhWHWHHWHWWW" in "Whump"
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-03
Updated: 2020-04-03
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:38:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23465521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/so_soft_boy/pseuds/so_soft_boy, https://archiveofourown.org/users/ymirjotunn/pseuds/ymirjotunn
Summary: The interrogation room goes differently sometimes. Akechi looks for catharsis, Akira fails to give it to him.
Relationships: Akechi Goro/Kurusu Akira
Comments: 8
Kudos: 131





	quantum

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [dead photon](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23465518) by [so_soft_boy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/so_soft_boy/pseuds/so_soft_boy), [ymirjotunn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ymirjotunn/pseuds/ymirjotunn). 



> please mind the tags!  
> a collaborative piece with ymirjotunn, companion to [dead photon](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23465518) which is from akechi's perspective.

In the silence after Sae leaves, an eternity passes. Akira sits with himself out of synch, cognition and reality pressed close against itself. The barrier between them is worn thin here, like he is worn thin, like both things have to be in order for Joker to survive. There is never a missing body, only a missing mind. 

The plan is complex. The plan has a million moving parts that don’t work together, gears linked with nothing more than rubber bands threatening to snap. The plan is a show, a sham, a farce to fit a narrative. In reality, it doesn’t _work._

It’s lucky that the wildcard isn’t bound by such things.

The click of the door startles him out of his stale reverie, full body flinching at the quiet noise. That noise has indicated nothing but more pain for some time now, logically, only hours, but cut off from the rest of the world there’s no way to tell. It’s felt more like days, years, an eternity cycling between semi-conscious pain and _fully_ conscious pain. 

“Oh, Joker.” The voice is quiet, soft, but forces his eyes to focus, to process the figure standing before him now. Akechi, right on cue. “What have they done to you?”

“What haven’t they?” Akira snorts, looking back down at his fingers idly tapping on the table. It’s an unbreakable habit, to make light of awful situations. The correct response is - 

“Akechi?” he asks, sitting up, brows knitting in convincing confusion. With the absurd cocktail of drugs still working its way through his body, it’s not hard to look bewildered by the world at large. “How did - What are you doing here?”

“I came to rescue you, of course,” Akechi says, trading his blank expression for a comforting smile. It holds all the warmth of a porcelain mask. “I know most of the people here, and I have the clearance. I’m sorry I couldn’t get here earlier.”

Maybe, eventually, Akechi will be sorry for what he’s about to do. Akira closes his eyes as Akechi walks behind him, pretending just for a moment as he rests his hands on his slumped shoulders, that this could be the truth. That the sweet murmur of “don’t worry, I’ve got you, Joker,” is genuine rather than mocking. The weight of his hands is achingly familiar in a way he can’t place, soothing even when he knows the intent behind them. It would be easy to relax in the chair, to slump back against Akechi’s torso and absorb whatever trace of warmth he can get through his long coat.

Then his hands close around Akira’s neck like a vise and the moment is broken. The gasp wrenched from his chest is one of genuine surprise; he wasn’t expecting _this_ and there’s a primal sort of panic that makes him scratch uselessly at the grip. Akechi forces his head back and his face fills his vision, smiling, laughing, haloed by the fluorescent lights, and when the laugh trails off the smile stays, the stretched past breaking grin of someone with too much to contain. Fleetingly, Akira hopes this is how Akechi finishes him this time. There’s a personal touch that the silenced pistol doesn’t have, and in some twisted way he’s almost _grateful_ for it.

“Just kidding. I’m going to fucking _kill you_.”

Then the pressure on his neck slacks, and he barely has time to suck in a breath before his head is shoved forward into the table, nose meeting the metal in a sickening _crunch_. One more thing broken. Honestly, it’s surprising that it hadn’t been earlier, being tossed around like a toy between eager hands. He sucks in air between his teeth, grabs the chair beneath him in a white-knuckled grip. Nothing like pain and another desperate shot of adrenaline to get the body moving. If Akechi wants to toy with him, fine, but in a surge of spite he wants to make the bastard _work for it._

He tenses his legs and shoves back, hitting Akechi with the back of the chair. He meant to throw himself in the opposite direction but it’s more of a lurch, pain shooting up his leg and the ground rising up to meet him. Turning the fall into a roll still hurts. He stops at the edge of the room, too small to make much distance but it’s at least something, gives him half a second to catch his breath as Akechi stalks towards him. 

“Sounds great!” he spits, hating how his voice cracks, grating against his throat. “Love to see you try.”

He starts to rise on shaky limbs, willing his vision to stay in focus. There is a clarity gradually returning to him that he would appreciate more if it didn’t come with the increasing awareness of his body. Everything hurts. Trying to catalogue it right now is a distraction he doesn’t need, so he bares his teeth in the reflection of the grin he knows is on Akechi’s face, blurry as it is. He’s striding towards him, pulling his leg back, and Joker braces himself but he’s still not ready for it.

The kick lands between already injured ribs, and if they were only fractured before they’re _definitely_ broken now, jagged edges punching into him. There’s more pain, of course there’s more pain, but that’s much less of a problem than the breathlessness beyond being winded, the deep feeling of something being _wrong._ The cough forced from his chest tears at his throat, then there is nothing left in his lungs and he can’t breathe back in. He’s frozen, fallen on his side with his hands splayed and twitching on the ground. 

“Do you honestly think I have to _try?_ ” Akechi is asking him, and he’s right, there’s nothing Akira can do like this but he still resents it. “Look at the state you’re in, Joker, and then look at _me_.”

The barest breath works its way back into his lungs, instantly cut off by the sharp heel digging into the back of his hand. Akechi is talking (he never stops talking), but Akira can’t understand what he’s saying. His brain is caught up in _painbreathe pain painbreathe BREATHE-_ and he screams at the grinding snap in the palm of his hand but it comes out as a whine without the air for it.

He’s going to survive this. This body won’t, but a version of him will. That version, sitting as safe and whole as he can be still gasps for air with clear lungs. Fingers twitch against a table he knows he can move away from, just - doesn’t. It’s fine, he’s fine, as long as he believes that it will become true. It will be true. It _is_ true.

“-not your friend,” Akechi’s voice drips back into his head and he’s on the floor again, he never left. “I’m not your _teammate._ I’m not a pretty face on the television. I’m a liar and a killer and I’m _going to break you._ ” His voice is so strained, breaking, words coming out half in giggles. Full of a desperate, manic energy that Joker has felt in his own throat more times than he cares to count. His words reverberate, turning over and around themselves as Joker tunes out what pain he can, lets it fade into background noise. 

Akechi is not what he thinks he is, and there’s an ache in Akira’s chest at not being able to get that truth through to him that cuts deeper than any injury.

His hand is still pinned, fragmented bones scraping against themselves under the grinding of Akechi’s heel. It would be easier to give up now, to let his body be kicked around without paying attention to it, hole up inside his head where it’s safe and wait it out. He can’t, though, filled with too much spite and determination to just give up. Joker slams his free hand against the ground, pushing himself up and gulping down air in shuddering gasps. A normal human would probably be in shock right now, but he’s not exactly a normal human, and he’s had entirely too much experience shrugging off the kind of pain that can tear a person apart. He throws his hand up, grabbing the back of Akechi’s knee and digs his fingers in as hard as he can. It doesn’t buckle, but it gives him a sliver of leverage and a moment of overconfident intrigue from Akechi. He’s not a helpless kid, he’s a Phantom Thief, he’s _**the**_ Phantom Thief, and he is not going to roll over and acquiesce to his slow death. 

No.

He headbutts Akechi in the dick.

Joker takes a certain amount of grim satisfaction in the way he half crumples, caught off guard and thrown off balance. In a surge of adrenaline he keeps going, launches upright and catches Akechi in the stomach with his elbow before stumbling backwards and away, shoulders bouncing against the locked door of the cell. Despite being curled in on himself, Akechi forces his head up, movement jerky and disjointed, smiling, smiling in the way that twists his face into a grim mask of himself, eyes crinkled in something like pain and something like glee. Akira feels more present now, senses growing sharper along with the pain.

“Well? What are you waiting for?” He hardly recognizes his own voice at this point, strained and rasping. Coughing, a bubbling sensation rises in his throat, cracking and bursting, the taste of iron spilling over his tongue and out of his mouth. The lower half of his face is warm and sticky from his nose already, the spit and blood dripping from his mouth hardly makes a difference. “Go on, kill me.”

“Oh no, I’m not going to kill you yet.” Akechi rasps, unfolding himself, still catching his breath. His first step forward is unsteady but it won’t take long for him to recover entirely. There’s no room to run in this space, even if Akira could, he’d just be delaying the inevitable for no good reason. He already is delaying the inevitable for no good reason.

“You think you’re so fucking perfect,” he spits, as if Akira could ever think that highly of himself. “You think you can do _anything_. That you can get away with whatever you want. Well, you _can’t._ ”

Another step forward and Joker goes to move again but he’s too slow, Akechi is closing the distance and then his knuckles connect with his jaw, sending his face slamming into the wall. 

“Sooner or later,” he screams, “the world is _going_ to catch up with you!”

“I know,” Akira tries to say but can barely get it out between blows. If he had any more energy he might be able to take advantage of how open Akechi is leaving himself, swinging wild and careless, but he can at least breathe easier for a moment while he’s focusing on his face. Then Akechi grabs him, pulling him over and onto his rising knee and the only reason he doesn’t fall forward is the glove fisted in his hair, holding him up as he gags on the blood rising in his throat.

“Like it catches up with _all of us_!”

His head is yanked up and Akechi’s other fist connects with his eye before he can even catch his breath. He slams back against the wall, choking on his own breath. Maybe that will kill him before Akechi gets the chance to, and doesn’t that seem luridly poetic, to die choking on his own blood?

Agony radiates out from his eye, when he forces it open his vision is _fucked,_ he can only barely make out the twisted, mocking smile still plastered on Akechi’s face. It’s getting worse, too, darkness creeping in on the edge of his field of vision. Great. Just what he was missing. More internal bleeding. This is such bullshit. He doesn’t want to die of a thousand injuries piled on top of each other, melting into a nightmare that he isn’t certain he can wake up from. He has to, though. Has to keep struggling, keep fighting back, try to communicate any of the thoughts swirling around in his head.

“I fucking _know!_ Shut _up!_ ” Akira practically screams, as loud as his battered chest will allow, plants his palms against Akechi’s chest and shoves. It barely creates any distance between them, but it's just enough time to suck in a desperate breath and keep talking. 

“The _world_ wants me dead for existing, I know! I can’t do one good thing, can’t _live_ without consequences,” He’s wheezing, half his words are coming out in wet coughs. He can’t even fix his eyes on Akechi, his vision completely blurred. He blinks rapidly, ignoring the pained protests of one eye, and his vision partially clears for a moment before blurring again. 

He’s crying now. He wasn’t certain he was still physically capable of it. He’s done plenty of it tonight already, from pain, fatigue, anger, but now he’s just tired, exhausted. He’s so tired. Maybe it’s because of his eye, maybe it’s just one last outpouring of frustration against an unfair world. All that exists is Akechi, pain, and Akira’s useless fury. His body is so heavy.

“What did I do to _you_ , Crow?” He isn’t sure if he expects an answer. “What did I do wrong?”

There’s a pause as Akechi takes a step back, and then,

“What did you do wrong? What have you _ever_ done wrong, Kurusu?” Akira is watching him without really seeing, trying to absorb the words. “The world wants you dead for existing?” He almost chokes, swallows, continues. “The world wants a lot of us dead for existing, Joker. You’re hardly the only one. You, though.”

There’s an edge to Akechi’s voice, the tone of a bitter smile. “The world _loves_ you. For all it wants to kill you, Kurusu, you’re so-” His voice cracks, and he hisses through his teeth. “You’re so fucking _loved._ All your little thieving friends. Sakura. That girl in the church, the child in the arcade, that woman who comes to do your laundry - your teacher, isn’t she? They all _love_ you, Joker. For no other reason that you _exist._ ”

He can only stare, blinking slowly to try to clear his eyes without much success. Akechi is wrong; there are plenty of reasons to love him, he should know, he made each one. Joker has the decency to wear his mask where everyone can see it, but Akira carries one even closer and more carefully than he does. When was the last time he did something that wasn’t to improve a relationship with a confidant, to hone his skills to tackle the Metaverse, to contort himself into the mold offered up by everyone who “loves” him? How long has he been crafting this personality, so rehearsed it seems genuine, perfectly pleasant, designed to be useful? It works so well on everyone but the one person who actually _matters_. 

“So, what did you do to me?” Akechi laughs, just once, ringing around the room like a gunshot. “You got in the way. You-” his voice is strained, face twisted into something more like a sneer now. “You thought you could _change things_. Could change this _world_ , rotten to the core as it is.”

He’s right about that, at least. All this and he still hasn’t come close to touching the beating, rotting heart at the center of it all, pumping apathy like blood through the veins of his city. Joker will end it, silence the malignant pulse thrumming in his ears, nothing at all is better than the beast growing fat at the center of it all. Crow should be there to finish things with him. He never is.

“You don’t _deserve_ an easy death. You deserve to suffer as much as everyone else in this world.” As much as _he_ did. “And I’m not going to let you forget that for a _moment_ before you die.”

As if he ever could.

“Fuck me for trying, huh?” Joker’s face cracks into a grin, crooked and bloody and bitter. “For being lucky? What are you, karma?”

Akira snorts, then it turns into a chuckle, and he’s laughing now, wild, maniacal, delirious laughter. His head falls back, knocking against the door, the sensation lost under the ache of everything else, and his legs finally give out under him. Thank god he’s braced upright, can slide down to the floor as he howls, can’t stand the thought of falling into Akechi and being discarded like so much garbage. _Attic trash._ There’s another stab of pain in his chest, his ribs jostled in a new and exciting way. Even through that he’s laughing, choking breaths intermingled with the hysterical sound. It’s all he can do, laugh miserably in the face of death. He’s cold. Coughing overtakes the laughter, trailing off into wheezing breaths, and his eyes close. All that’s left is giving in.

“Okay. Okay, Akechi.” A smile has settled on his face, far from happy, just sedate resignation as worn as the rest of him, frayed around the edges. “Take my penance. It’s about time you won.”

He’s so tired.

“Aren’t you scared?” Akechi asks, voice closer now. “Aren’t you- don’t you feel betrayed? Don’t you feel _angry_?” 

“‘Course not, ‘ketchi.” Akira forces his eyes back open to look at Akechi kneeling between his legs, bewildered but still so full of rage. Half of his vision is dark now, obscured by blood. He is scared, always scared, but not of Akechi. Not of death. The world wants him dead but fate needs him alive, to play out the rest of his scenes with the tortured grace of a hero. A bump in the road, is all this is. He will drag a body back into the world in far better shape than this one is in, with only the memories of the pain to hold onto.

Memories. This confrontation hasn’t gone quite like this before, but it never goes exactly the same. It’s only the same broad strokes, detail filled by experience. He can’t feel betrayed by something he expected, can’t be angry at Akechi for doing what he feels he must.

He reaches out, unsteady but careful, to graze along his cheek and tuck the hair falling in Akechi’s face behind his ear.

“I don’t blame you,” he says, knowing he’s overstepping, being overly familiar, overly fond, but he knows what comes next, when the next time he sees Akechi will be. His hand drops again.

Every so often, he feels like he remembers things that can’t have happened. For a moment, he sees a glimpse of that same little gesture repeated in a different context, without pain and blood clouding his vision, open adoration clear and reciprocated. Seems more like wishful thinking than precognition. Can’t hurt to indulge in the thought of it, at least.

“Hey, if you’re gonna off me, better do it soon, ange-” He’s cut off by a coughing fit that rattles his whole body and splatters blood all the way onto Akechi’s knees. It keeps getting harder to breathe in. He can’t let go yet. He needs to see this through to the end.

“Shut up,” Akechi says, voice breaking on it. “Shut up.” He repeats it, steadier, and his hands are at Akira’s throat. “Shut _up._ ”

He doesn’t say anything, doesn’t make a sound as the pressure increases. Watches the tears well in Akechi’s eyes and spill over, rolling down his cheeks unnoticed, or at least unacknowledged. 

“This is my fault. You _idiot,_ this is _my fault_.”

He has no air left to make words with but he thinks _it’s okay. It’s okay, I forgive you_. Akechi wouldn’t believe him even if he could say it. 

“ _Shut UP!_ ”

So he smiles, smiles as his throat shakes under the pressure, smiles as it gets harder to make out what he’s saying, harder still to understand.

“You’re such a fucking fool.”

Smiles as he stops being able to feel the pressure around his neck, smiles as his fragile flesh falters and fails.

\---

Consider the idea of something occupying multiple states unless it is observed. 

A wave and a particle. Dead and alive. Only resolving into a single seemingly known property when it’s looked at. Does it ever stop being both? Or could the act of being observed fundamentally change a thing, irrevocably resolve it into something that can be understood from a single point of view? Consider also that perception is a flawed thing, a fallible thing. Accepting observations puts an unfounded faith in senses that serve us only inasmuch as they secure survival.

Akira is looking at his own dead body, and not thinking about any of that. He isn’t thinking about much of anything, really.

“A fascinating gambit, dear Trickster.”

The table before him is dark wood now, the chair he sits in soft and high-backed. Intense eyes peer down a beaklike nose at him, calculating.

“You would sacrifice yourself for the sake of continuity?”

“It’s hardly a sacrifice,” Joker scoffs, mouth twisting into a grimace disguised as a smile. “After all, the game ends if I die.”

“You assume I will not let you remain dead.”

“You call this dead?” He can feel the new bruises around his neck alongside a hundred other small deaths. Burns shimmer on his skin, frost crackles on purple rot, blood runs off him in slow rivulets, lives dripping red down his face and spine. The god is silent behind its false face, grin rigid and unchanging. “More importantly, you’d let things end with the story unfinished?”

“You do craft quite the narrative. Very well,” The god laughs, like this was its plan all along, like its eventual victory is still assured, like it knows how the rest of this story goes. Its fascination keeps Joker alive, over and over again. “Let us see how you resolve this tale.”

Akira is in a small, dim room with only cold metal beneath his hands, only glasses covering his face. He hasn’t been anywhere else. Niijima will be coming back soon. That’s how the next part is supposed to go. Moving according to stage directions, gliding along on the wheels of a machine greased with _deus ex_. Akira does not linger on the phantom feeling of hands around his neck, blood filling his lungs, breath slipping away. If he thinks about it, he’ll get lost in it, consumed by it. He’s alive, and he’s going to stay that way.

He is so tired.

The door opens. He flinches reflexively, half expecting to see his body pushed over the concrete like a doorstop, but it isn’t really here, isn’t lying next to this door. The double vision fades, focusing on Sae standing in the doorway. She’s glaring down at him with a tight-lipped expression meant to be stern and unreadable, but she always gives away more than she means to. Admittedly, she _has_ had an awful lot to process recently.

“I still don’t trust you,” she says even as she gestures for him to get up.

“You don’t need to.” Joker shrugs, walking towards the doorway.

He steps through his own corpse, and imagines this is what it must feel like to walk over your own grave. The chill of dread, of knowing this survival trick shouldn’t have been able to happen. The weight of knowledge sits heavy in the pit of his stomach, knowledge he has already taken to his grave. Alive and dead.

He has no one to blame but himself.

**Author's Note:**

> akira and joker are a system, there's a lot of overlap between them here (not every instance of their name corresponds to that person specifically) but I Need People To Know.


End file.
